When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s

by John Ganz

In 1981 Reagan named Perot to his Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, where he quickly became a conduit for questionable information and dubious schemes. But perhaps more important to the administration, Perot was also a possible source of cash. Private money raised on behalf of POW/MIAs ended up being funneled by the National Security Council to anti-communist guerrillas in Laos. A National Security Council staffer, Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, working with a covert Pentagon unit called the Intelligence Support Activity (ISA), began to hit Perot up for ransom money to free the American hostages taken by Hezbollah in Lebanon and General James Dozier, who’d been kidnapped by the Red Brigades in Italy. In neither case did Perot’s money end up securing the release of the prisoners, but he came up with it happily. Perot also claimed that the government wanted him to organize a rescue attempt for Dozier. (The same secret DOD group—ISA—was also responsible for providing support for Bo Gritz’s Southeast Asian activities.)